Journalism has been declared dead many times. It has survived every obituary

On World News Day, one fact deserves to be said without qualification: journalism is alive.

It has been declared dead many times. It has survived every obituary.

Radio was supposed to diminish newspapers. Television was expected to make radio irrelevant. The internet was going to kill print. Social media was going to make newsrooms redundant. Now artificial intelligence is being presented as journalism’s next existential threat.

The platform changes. The prediction returns. Journalism adapts.

Because the fundamental need has not changed: someone still has to establish what actually happened.

That is what separates journalism from the enormous flow of information around us. Journalism means reporting, verification, questioning, investigation, context and, crucially, accountability for what is published.

Indian journalism demonstrates this every day.

Some of the country’s most significant stories have emerged because reporters were willing to spend weeks or months following documents, cultivating sources and asking difficult questions. Investigations into offshore accounts, political funding, corporate governance, financial irregularities, public policy and institutional decision-making have shown repeatedly that rigorous reporting can expose facts that would otherwise remain hidden.

Yet journalism should not be measured only by the investigation that dominates the front page.

Its real strength is also found in the everyday work of thousands of journalists across India.

They sit in courtrooms, track Parliament and state assemblies, report from villages, follow companies and markets, cover hospitals and universities, question local administrations and travel to places that rarely make the national news cycle. They report elections from remote constituencies, natural disasters from the ground and stories of ordinary Indians whose voices might otherwise go unheard.

Much of this work never goes viral.

It still matters.

Indeed, some of the most valuable journalism is precisely the journalism that is not designed for virality. Its value comes from being accurate, persistent and rooted in facts.

None of this means Indian journalism is beyond criticism.

Parts of the news ecosystem have become too driven by speed, spectacle and engagement metrics. Television debates can sometimes become louder than the stories they are meant to illuminate. Clickbait can crowd out depth. Opinion and reportage are not always separated clearly enough. And in the race to be first, the more important obligation to be right can suffer.

A confident media industry should be capable of acknowledging these shortcomings.

But criticism of journalism must not become an obituary for journalism.

If anything, the present information environment makes professional journalism more necessary.

We live in an age in which anyone with a smartphone can potentially publish to millions. Rumour can move around the world within minutes. Generative AI can create convincing text, photographs, voices and videos almost instantly.

Information is no longer scarce.

Trust is.

That may become journalism’s greatest value in the years ahead.

Audiences will increasingly need to know not merely what they are seeing, but whether it has been verified. Who checked it? What evidence supports it? Has another side been heard? Is somebody willing to put their name and reputation behind the information?

These are journalistic questions.

The newsroom of the future cannot win simply by producing more content or publishing a few seconds faster. Its competitive advantage will come from credibility, original reporting, expertise, verification and context.

Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly transform newsrooms. It will assist research, translation, production and distribution. Business models will evolve. Formats will change. Some institutions will disappear and new ones will emerge.

That is not necessarily the death of journalism.

It is journalism doing what it has always done: adapting.

For too long, we have confused the decline of a particular format with the decline of the profession. Newspapers may change. Television will change. Digital platforms will change again.

Journalism is bigger than the platform carrying it.

It exists because societies need people who will go where others will not, ask questions that others will not ask, examine evidence, challenge power and tell citizens what they have found.

As long as governments govern, companies wield influence, institutions make decisions and people want to understand the world around them, journalism will have a purpose.

So, on World News Day, perhaps we should stop asking whether journalism will survive.

It already has.

Again and again.